Celebration at the Edge of Decay

By MATT GROSS

Published: June 3, 2010

IN the claustrophobic confines of New York City, nothing marks the beginning of summer like an open-air dance party. And in South Brooklyn on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, summer commenced at an event space known as the Bklyn Yard.

In a grove of leafy trees, hundreds of women (exposed shoulders, gladiator sandals) and men (straw hats, crisp shorts, multicolored Nikes) swayed to the effervescent beats of Michael Mayer, a techno D.J. from Cologne, Germany. Local children turned the Yard's boccie courts into sandboxes, while their parents picked at freshly made brick-oven pizzas. The line for drinks (sangria, Sixpoint Craft Ales) stretched nearly as long as the line for the portable toilets. Shortly after 8 o'clock, the sun began to set, turning the sky a vibrant pink that was reflected in the placid waters running alongside the Yard: the notoriously polluted Gowanus Canal.

''There's no place in Brooklyn, or in New York City, that feels kind of more pleasant than being right here, which is odd given that that is a toxic waterway,'' said Jennifer Prediger, a producer of environmental videos who lives in nearby Carroll Gardens. ''But it's actually quite lovely. It's the loveliest toxic waterway I've ever spent time on.''

In the course of its roughly 150-year history, the Gowanus Canal has been called many things, but it's fair to say ''lovely'' is probably not one of them. Now, however, the Gowanus micro-neighborhood -- bounded by the gentrifying brownstone districts of Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill and Park Slope -- is enjoying its moment in the summer sun, drawing the city's hipsters to its art galleries and rock-climbing gyms, its nightclubs and rooftop film series. The half-empty warehouses and semi-derelict factories -- for so long seen as post-industrial blight -- now give Gowanus a special cultural edge, like a miniature Baltimore or Detroit (with terrifying pollution substituting for terrifying crime).

''It's the last chance for there to be a place for some creative stuff to happen,'' said David Belt, a local architect responsible for some of the neighborhood's most creative stuff. Last year, he converted Dumpsters into swimming pools and installed them in a Gowanus lot. This year, he designed ''Glassphemy!'', a recycling-themed installation that lets people throw bottles at one another. ''There's industrial buildings, there's open space, there's blurry beauty everywhere,'' he said. ''There's kind of the feeling that you can still discover something special, that you're using your own aesthetic to interpret. Everything isn't, you know, a condo with a silly name.''

And it won't be for a little while longer, thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, which in March designated the canal and its immediate surroundings a Superfund site, ordering a cleanup it says will take 10 to 12 years and cost $300 million to $500 million. The move was opposed by the city, which wanted to avoid the Superfund stigma and manage the cleanup itself, and real estate developers like Toll Brothers, which wanted to break ground as soon as possible on a 480-unit canal-side apartment complex. Now development plans are on hold.

''We had a big party -- with Champagne,'' said Marlene Donnelly, a member of Friends and Residents of Greater Gowanus, an activist group that fought for the Superfund designation. She was sitting in a lounge chair in the well-tended backyard of her Gowanus home with her husband, Benjamin R. M. Ellis, an architect.

''There was hope in the world that the mayor and his cronies and rapacious developers lost,'' said Mr. Ellis. ''It was clearly a victory.''

That victory, as they see it, is still only partial. The E.P.A. cleanup covers only the canal and the polluted soil, but does not address the fact that whenever it rains, sewage from the surrounding neighborhoods runs directly into the canal. Responsibility for fixing that problem lies with the city, whose current plans would alleviate ''approximately 34 percent'' of the runoff. Ms. Donnelly and Mr. Ellis say it's more like 10 percent, and until the sewage system is improved, residential development should be delayed in the area, for which Mr. Ellis had a variety of descriptions, ranging from ''filthy industrial wasteland'' to ''toilet bowl.''

''I mean, come on! Hello! It's just not good planning,'' Mr. Ellis said, his eyes wide behind his glasses and his steely hair suddenly leonine. ''That's it. And that's what we've been saying all along: Let's clean it up, and then let's talk.''

What they (and many other locals) want to see is developments like the Old American Can Factory, a complex of Civil War-era brick buildings whose owner, Nathan F. Elbogen, has turned them into affordable offices, studios and workshops for creative businesses like the fashion label Vena Cava and the art space Issue Project Room (which moved to Gowanus after being priced out of the East Village). The Jewish Press building, an enormous, disused, nearly windowless structure, could become a theater, Ms. Donnelly said.

An article last Thursday about the growth of cultural and social events around the Gowanus Canal despite its toxic status reported on an event space there called Bklyn Yard. After the section had gone to press, the organizers of Bklyn Yard announced that it was closing because their lease had been canceled.